


Trapezoid

by JackyM



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Carlos Backstory, Carlos is Autistic, Carlos is a Good husband, Carlos-centric, Cecil is a Good Husband, Found Family, Home, M/M, cecilos - Freeform, some allusions to parental abuse/homophobia!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 08:35:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11551494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackyM/pseuds/JackyM
Summary: Dr. Kayali comes to Night Vale to discuss some things with Carlos.





	Trapezoid

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NikiPaprika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NikiPaprika/gifts).



> For a while now I've wanted to write a fic where I kind of get into some head-canons I have for Carlos' backstory, and my awesome wonderful friend Niki asked if I could write a fic about Carlos catching up with Dr. Kayali and talking about finding a home in Night Vale and I thought that would TOTALLY work as a way to bring those up in a fic! And plus it's a totally cool idea and I had a lot of fun writing this! nwn
> 
> You know initially I thought naming this fic after a shape, and such a confusing one at that when you think about finding its area, was weird, but I think it works? >W<

“Are you sure you don’t need me to come with you? I can probably have one of the interns take care of the interview with city council today. Tamika is keeping them well-fed so most of their press releases aren’t ‘I’m hungry’.”

“I think I’m okay,” said Carlos, unbuckling his seatbelt and looking at Cecil with a gentle smile, “you should go do your job. Because you are so good at it, and because you love doing it. And also because I love seeing you doing your job and being happy while doing that. And, anyways, Dr. Kayali said that she didn’t have much time to meet me. She just has this afternoon, before she has to go back. She said it’s for a seminar about the physics behind stuff. I mean she said, ‘I have a seminar on the physics behind stuff’ when I asked if we could maybe meet at another time when maybe you weren’t working or when she wasn’t working or when none of us are working.”

Carlos wasn’t sure if Dr. Kayali was completely honest when she said that she had a seminar to get back to. He wanted to think she was being truthful, but the way she talked about needing to leave, really urgently, and the disdain in her voice when she said “this place” made Carlos think otherwise. And even if she was, Carlos worried that Dr. Kayali simply didn’t want to be in Night Vale for more than what probably exceeded an hour. In weird time, of course. 

“As long as you’re alright,” said Cecil, reaching out and resting a hand on Carlos’ cheek so he was delicately holding Carlos’ head in his hand, “call me if you need to, okay? I’ll drive over right away.”

“I will,” said Carlos, holding his husband’s wrist, “but it’s not a big deal. Really. That’s a scientific promise.”

“Is that different from a regular promise?”

“Only in that it is backed by facts and logic and therefore has a much greater probability of being kept. A little over seventy percent more likely.”

They both leaned forward to give one last a kiss, tried not to let it last to long, failed somewhat in that area, and Carlos slipped out of the car. He crossed his arms and watched Cecil back out of the Moonlite All Nite Diner’s parking lot. It was hot out. It was always hot out, a now familiar dry heat that Carlos took a degree of comfort in. It felt normal, something that happened every day in a place he called home. It wasn’t the unbearable searing heat that he’d felt the first time he visited Night Vale. Now, it felt like a routine searing heat that in a way felt like an old friend, and anything short of a problem. Even if it got so hot sometimes that signs melted. 

It was much cooler inside the diner. Not because of air conditioning, but because of a glacier that recently appeared in and took up half the kitchen. On the downside, it make service much slower, but on the upside, the diner now saved a fortune on electricity. It had been an indeterminate time since Carlos last saw Dr. Kayali, but he recognized her immediately. She was intently looking at a menu, pinning it down on the table with her hands as it tried wriggling free. Carlos didn’t greet her immediately, and crossed his arms back together and held them tightly. When he found the courage to move forward a few seconds later, he approached her.

“You need to tell them it is okay,” said Carlos when he reached the table Dr. Kayali was sitting at, “that way they will not panic. They um, they are very scared of you ordering and eating them instead of what is on them. So you need to tell them what you’re ordering.”

Dr. Kayali looked up over the rims of her glasses.

“They…panic?”

“Yeah. They are made of wormwood so they are prone to wriggling when they are afraid. Like how dogwood can bite you and maplewood will spit and try dragging you down into the holes they make in everything.”

“In that case,” she said, loosening her grip on the writhing menu and looking at it, “invisible strawberry pie, and I’m not going to eat you. You don’t look tasty. You look like you probably don’t taste good at all.”

Carlos sat in the booth across from her, and put his hands on the table, but kept them together, neatly steepled. He didn’t look at her.

“You look nervous,” Dr. Kayali said, trying to meet Carlos’ eyes.

“I am nervous.”

“Carlos,” she said quickly, the name spilling out in an exhale, “I’m not here to tell you to come back. Really. The last time I was here it seemed like you were busy and would be busy for some time, and met someone. The idea of coming back would probably be complicated. I assumed. It felt like you had moved on from teaching then, however long ago that was. I don’t really know. I can’t tell. A few years ago, let’s say that. Even if you were in some kind of danger I thought that it was clear you weren’t desperately trying to leave.”

“Time here is weird, Asli. Distorted. Like how higher elevations have different temperatures and humidity. The same concept applies here, but with time. Actually, that’s why I came here in the first place. Because I had never heard of something like that before. It was the strangest and most beautiful thing that I had ever seen. It made Night Vale the most, scientifically speaking, interesting town in the United States. I did not completely understand time then and I don’t even completely understand it now. I just know it’s weird. I don’t understand, and I am still trying to find it out.”

“But that’s not the _only_ reason you stayed.”

“No.”

“Then why? Aside from the time anomalies. Honestly, Carlos, if that’s the only reason you want to get into, that’s fine. But it really feels as thought it isn’t. It feels like there are many other reasons besides this one. Is it because of your—”

“It’s not just that,” Carlos interrupted, abruptly, looking at Dr. Kayali in the eyes now, “I mean. I’m sorry, for interrupting, I didn’t mean to, and you can keep going if you were going to mention other things…besides, y’know…”

“No. No, continue.”

“Okay. Um. Well. It wasn’t. It wasn’t just them. They had something to do with it. There were many personal things they did not know, and many personal things they thought they knew. I thought that maybe I could do it, just put up with it, but. I couldn’t. I started to feel not safe, especially around them, and being close to them at all.”

“I didn’t know much about them but. They didn’t seem very loving.”

“We disagreed on many things, Asli. I needed. Um. I needed space. I need a lot of space, and I needed that space for a long, long time. With space comes distance. And when that distance is from a home, and…and a family…it is difficult. Difficult to realize it, and difficult to cope with it.”

“You always said you felt great and at home there, especially when teaching. I’m guessing now that that wasn’t entirely the truth.”

“No,” said Carlos, widening his eyes, “I didn’t. I…I don’t remember everything. But I do remember some things, and how many of those things were sad things. There were some happy things. But it’s possible to not be happy with how your life is, in general. And it’s possible too to think things are okay just because things feel happy sometimes, when really, they’re not happy at all. I thought that I was at home there, and I definitely told people that. But I think that it is easy to make excuses for things that make you sad because it is hard to admit something upsets you when others say that it is good for you. I have felt that way, twice.”

“Were you just lonely?”

“Lonely is not a good word. It does not completely describe how I felt, because I felt many other things besides loneliness. Loneliness was a part of it, but it was not all of it. Maybe discontent is better. Discontent with how I did not feel like I was being a scientist, discontent with how I did not feel like I had a home, discontent with how I had not met, um, someone yet. A lot of discontents.”

“Why here, then? I know Cecil told you about what things were like when I came here, looking for you. Didn’t you experience that yourself when you came here? What about this place made you think, ‘home’? The first time I came here…hell, even when I came yesterday…it’s dangerous, here, Carlos. That’s why I was concerned.”

“I did feel that way when I first came here, Asli. It was um, it was new and terrifying and I had to change my schedule and everything. And I think that whenever you came last, whenever that was time-wise, Night Vale was different in a way. Maybe some of the changes are not as easy to see, but I have seen them, and…it’s such an interesting place, scientifically speaking. The most scientifically interesting town in the United States. There is always so much going on here that science has trouble explaining, and that is what makes it so interesting. Science will always have a place here. I will always have a place here. And there is someone really important to me here. Someone who is just as much a part of this town as all of the interesting things that happen here, someone who is wonderful and kind and handsome and passionate. Someone who is just as much a home to me now as Night Vale is. He…he and his family are my home and family now, Asli. A home and family are both made up of people who love you. People who love you because of who you are, in complete veracity. I found someone here who loves me for that. And a family here who loves me for that. I love my family, and, um, and Cecil specifically.”

“He said you never told him.”

“About what?”

“About working with us. At the University Of What It Is.”

“No,” Carlos let his eyes slip away again and he shrunk in his booth, “no, I did not. Because of many reasons. All of them personal, none of them professional, none of them the kind of thing that I wanted to be my life anymore. I…I just was looking for the scientifically interesting, back then. It is hard to remember it, but, I know that is why I am here. And I know I did not intend to stay here, but I did.”

“I guess that makes sense,” she replied, sitting back and crossing her arms. She was silent for a few moments. She looked at the diner’s ceilings, at the ice seeping out of the kitchen doors, at one of the waitresses, Laura, and her many branches that grew out of her arms in thick, gnarled patterns, the leaves frostbitten and immobile in the cold. She would’ve complained about her pie not being there yet to someone, but she supposed it would take a while to use the kitchen at all with the glacier inside it. When she looked back at Carlos, he was looking down at his lap, focused on nothing at all. Dr. Kayali exhaled. It wasn’t that she was mad at him. Carlos had been gone for so long, they’d long gotten used to his absence and hired a new professor of science, even if he was a contemporary art professor which didn’t really make sense from most angles. His absence was no longer a shock, a loss that was still fresh. Dr. Kayali was the only person she knew still looking for him, because he’d always struck her as… _something_. _Someone_. No definitive word. But different, in the important way, the way that makes someone stand out. To her. They’d gotten along well enough, shared similar thoughts on various topics. But there’d always been something going on with Carlos that she never understood. She’d asked. A few things about a difficult family, but nothing specific, no definitive answer. Before he disappeared, she’d assumed he was fine, just…off, in a way. As though he wasn’t quite happy, with and about something. After he disappeared, she just worried. Worried he was in danger, or dead. Finding out he went to a place like Night Vale completely confirmed those fears. And it would have always concerned her if she never had some kind of closure. 

Well. She had that now. Closure. Such a succinct word. 

She supposed it wouldn’t kill her to smile a bit.

She felt like doing it anyways. S he rested her arms on the table and looked at Carlos directly, gently. 

“You really love him, huh.”

“Yeah,” Carlos replied, smiling now, for the first time since he sat down, “I do. I love him a lot. He feels like home. He is home, actually, I…I feel safe and happy when he hugs me and when I wake up next to him in the morning and when I hear him on the radio. I love him, Asli. So much. Sharing a home with him, a life with him…it is amazing. Shared experiences and emotions and decisions that amount to something called love is such a thrilling thing to be a part of. It is part of why every day is a good one. Because every day is just another day where I am home, and feel it.”

“I don’t know too much, but…I mean, he seemed really great when I met him.”

“He is really great. And also kind and caring and overwhelmed and cute and not really knowledgable when it comes to science. He is really _really_ great.”

“I can see that,” Dr. Kayali said, her features softening, “but being told you weren’t in any real kind of danger made me think that something else was wrong. If not danger then, I don’t know. Brainwashing, or something like that. Some other word that means brainwashing but sounds more scientific.”

“But that didn’t happen,” said Carlos, quickly, “it really didn’t. I…I don’t know why people seem to think that was the case. Or, is the case. Time is weird and so are tenses, because they are a time-based thing.”

“Other people feel that way?”

“No, not people. I’m sorry, not people. That is not entirely accurate, or precise, so saying that is not really the right thing to say, scientifically. But one person does, or did, depending on how time works relative to where they are right now. I did not find a home here because something or someone forced me to…I found a home here because there is someone here that I love, and a family that I love. That is never the sort of thing that you can force. Love works naturally. It’s a bunch of feelings and decisions and experiences that connect together and change over time, but always feel familiar, and that is what makes love a natural and beautiful thing. Things exist the same way. Nothing forces them to exist. Nothing forces anything to exist. Things exist through biological and chemical and physical processes working together and allowing something elegant to come out of all of it, y’know?”

“I do know. Well, not from experience. Just in the general, empathetic sort of way of knowing. The way we know things when people say like, I feel like a swordfish, you know, and we don’t actually know, we just feel, so we say we know. That kind of know. Listen, Carlos, I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do. If you don’t want to leave here, then the last thing I want to do is try and make you leave. I just wanted to know you were safe, and that you weren’t still…um.”

“I’m not. I feel very different, from how I did then. A lot has changed, in the good way.”

“Yeah. I can see that. I’m sorry for how I acted on the phone, by the way. I guess last time I left with a bad taste in my mouth.”

“That’s perfectly normal, it happens to anyone who leaves Night Vale. You wash the taste out with warm water and mud and then recite a poem of your choosing.”

“…I mean yes, but I meant that as a figure of speech. I mean I left feeling annoyed, and concerned. I didn’t really want to come back if I didn’t have to, but when you told me you’d come back, I still didn’t want to stay long. I’m sure you understand why.”

“I do. And even if things are different here, now, it’s, it’s okay, if you don’t like it here because of a bad experience.”

“No, I don’t dislike it here. Though admittedly I did schedule this trip right before a seminar on the physics behind stuff. I…I’m really sorry. Truly. I just,” here she moved her arms haphazardly and never finished her sentence. Carlos understood completely. 

A few moments later Dr. Kayali’s invisible pie was brought to the table, and Carlos told her about how very few people seemed to like it, and it was neat how she liked it. Someday, when she had more time, Carlos told her that she should meet his family, especially his brother-in-law Steve, who also really liked invisible pie. They left some undetermined amount of time after Dr. Kayali let napkin container eat her money and tip. It wasn’t a long amount of undetermined time, though. They were both sure of that much. 

“It’s been great, catching up,” said Dr. Kayali before she got up, “really. Thanks a lot for meeting with me. I can probably stop worrying now. Just probably. Everything is a probably. But like, this time it’s a probably with a more positive outlook.”

“I will,” said Carlos, after shaking her hand and giving her a smile, “and thanks for coming by, Asli. You’re always welcome to come here again, if you want. Cecil will do so personally! He _loves_ doing that.”

“Yeah. Will do. I’m glad you have Cecil, Carlos. Really. Tell him I sent my regards, to you and him.”

Carlos nodded, and smiled. He stayed in the booth after Dr. Kayali left, not wanting to go out in the heat yet, and wanting to collect his thoughts for a few moments. When he was done collecting his thoughts, he texted Cecil, letting him know he was done, and Cecil responded with one of those cat pictures with a caption underneath it.

He was so cute. 

 

“Heyyyy there, bunny,” said Cecil with a smile when Carlos got into the car, “Tamika is a very competent member of city council, definitely their best in eons. Most of them wanted to replace the water supply with viscera and orange soda, and Tamika recited parts of Water Quality by Claude E. Boyd to make them all be quiet and also to explain how water is a much better thing to have in the water supply. That or sweet iced tea. She’s doing so well, I’m proud of her! Anyways, how was it? I know service there has been slow lately but I was worried still that maybe you—oof!”

Cecil felt Carlos suddenly hug him from the passenger seat, tightly. He put an arm around Carlos and rested his chin on Carlos’ shoulder. Carlos held on to Cecil for a few minutes, and slid one of his hands into Cecil’s when they pulled apart. He held it affectionately, tenderly, stroking Cecil’s index finger with his thumb. He squeezed Cecil’s hands and looked at him, his eyes absolutely sparkling.

“I love you.”

“I love you too!”

“She was just worried, and wanted to know that I was doing fine. I mean. I am, always. I am a scientist, so I am always fine. But she wanted to make sure, and also, why I am here. I told her about you, and how, scientifically speaking and according to science and everything, you just…you feel like home. How Night Vale is a very strange place that time works very weirdly in, with several strange life forms and phenomena that defy physics on a daily basis, and is exhilarating from a scientific standpoint as a scientist and just from the standpoint of someone who has found a home and a family here. So much goes into a home and a family, like…you know how a trapezoid exists in space, somewhere, somehow, endlessly floating and dangerous and silent? And how so many things go into how it is defined and exists? Sides and angles and bases and various points and lines that come together in a specific, beautiful shape? How it is definable by so many traits? Those traits I think can come from anywhere. From any point in space. They can come together in so many ways. I, um, I’m saying, Ceece, that…it doesn’t need to be made of any particular points. They just need to be points that love each other and join together and form a shape. And I am happy that I have finally found people who are a family. Who love me, and whom I love. I um, I…the family I have outside of Night Vale. They’re not the family I have now. Maybe they aren’t my family at all. My family is you, and Steve, and Abby, and Janice, and all the people who love me. And I wanted Dr. Kayali to know that. And now she knows. She knows I’m safe and happy, with you. With my family. With my home.”

Cecil didn’t respond. 

He just pulled Carlos into his arms, and hugged him, tightly, eyes watering, smiling, as he had been doing almost as soon as Carlos started talking. Carlos felt Cecil’s arms around him, making a firm pressure, making him feel safe. He felt Cecil’s breathing, a little jagged in his sobs. 

“You’re crying,” said Carlos, looking up at Cecil and resting his head on Cecil’s chest when they broke apart somewhat, “you’re crying and smiling, kitty.”

“I know, I know,” Cecil replied, drying his eyes and cleaning up some of his mascara from his eyes, “but that is beautiful and brilliant and I love you so much? And you’re so wonderful? And I love being married to you? Carlos, you came here a few years ago and I had no idea how much my life would change because I met you that day. You came here, so earnest, so excited. And falling in love with you, sharing a life with you…sometimes I can’t believe the luck I had. It is amazing, how two people who exist in such a vast, uncaring universe can meet each other. It’s…it’s amazing. It’s like what you said about the trapezoids. Which is beautiful, and so smart. I am so, so glad I met you.”

“And I’m glad I met you, Ceece! I came here, looking to investigate the strange things happening in this strange town, and…and I met you. I met someone who I learned to share a home and a family and a life with. I found so much here. So much that I love, so much that excites me and makes this town such a special place.”

The two of them remained silent for a few minutes. They just held hands, and looked forward, past the diner’s parking lot and into the desert beyond, but in the air conditioned car, which made looking at a desert a more comfortable experience. Beyond the lot was a scrappy piece of land full of shrubs and cacti and rocks. It was barren, dry, hot. Full of deadly snakes and reptiles and government agents and hidden traps that lead far, far underground. And, most importantly, it was home. 

Cecil broke the silence briefly, exhaling and squeezing Carlos’ hand, feeling a wedding ring on Carlos’ ring finger, the same one on his own. 

“Hey, bunny?”

“Poot?”

“We’re so, so glad you’re a part of our family.”


End file.
